Once a young monk said to an old monk, "What is a monk?" The old monk answered him, "A monk is one who asks every day, 'What is a monk?"'
The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance is a branch of the Order of Cistercians, a monastic family of Roman Catholic monks and nuns which was founded in 1098 in France. In that year a small group of monks left the Benedictine Abbey of Molesme to build what they called simply the new monastery and to live quietly their monastic life. The Order has continued from that time until now with varying fortunes, and we now have houses of monks and nuns throughout the world. In the seventeenth century there was a further reform of our way of life which had its clearest expression at the Abbey of La Trappe in France; thus, our branch of the Cistercians came to be known popularly as the "Trappists."
I have experienced Cistercian life as a unity of two opposites. The daily life of a monk or nun is highly scheduled, arranged in a series of moments of prayer, chanting, study, work, solitude, communal action, eating, and sleep. Within this schedule one moves gradually more and more freely, less and less tightly, more and more like a stream flowing, less and less obstructed by the pebbles on the bottom. Control and freedom. Discipline and liberty. At first, and even for some time, these can seem like two things. But are they really the same, or different?
What is it that one monk might say in a journal such as this to a readership which is generally Buddhist? I find our traditions say One word very clearly: charity. Charity in its most classic root, caritas, the immediate and heartfelt going out to the other, the question "can I help?" There is no other purpose to our discipline, our training, our beliefs, our dialogue, our sitting, our meditations, our labors. There is no other root to the Gospel, and what other meaning is there to dharma? If the one next to you is cold, give him a coat. If she is thirsty, give some water. If you have nothing, what can you do? Find the answer to this question right away!
So why live in a monastery?
You have to live somewhere. I mean you have to do this thing called life in some concrete location every day, which is the location in which you find yourself. It is a great waste to begin thinking it needs to be done somewhere else. I may not have come to the monastery with this in mind at first, and I suspect the average man or woman who has set out in a Zen monastery may have his or her understanding jolted along the way, or for that matter every married man and woman as well, but right now and here I do find myself in a monastery and here I have this job to do.
There is, of course, a more metaphysical approach to our Cistercian monastic life. But it is a metaphysic that is also very grounded in everyday life, as is Zen monastic life as I understand it. A monastery is a microcosm. Living in a monastery for any extended period of time only intensifies this experience of the amazing "connectedness" of all of life. As I listen to others who come here on retreats, or friends who visit, I hear the same questions I ask myself. "Why am I here in this world?" "Why do we suffer as we do?" "Why am I (either loved or not loved, depending)?" And all of the usual interpersonal struggles of friends, acquaintances, spouses, and lovers, and the resulting confusions, pain, or joy. In the monastery we live these human questions within a very definite structure, one refined over centuries to blend work, prayer, and interaction with the Christian view of life and meaning.
This is not to say that it simply "works." There is no magic to life, only life itself. Life in the monastery is only life and one makes it by getting up in the morning, making one's way to the church to chant, to study, to work, to eat, to go to sleep.
I don't think it would be of value to engage here in theology, except perhaps to say that, in my experience, to attempt to approach this style of life without a broad understanding which transcends the small self, the ego world, my opinions, desires, etc., is to ask for more confusion, suffering, and misunderstanding. Zen, in particular kong-an work, seems to lend itself very well to our monastic life. How? It requires doing it to know that. But I believe that living in a correct understanding, able to function correctly in each situation, is to participate fully in this moment in the living person of Christ.
Brother Benjamin lives at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a renowned Trappist monastery.
This page copyright © The Kwan Um School of Zen